Absence of Blade

by Caitlin Demaris McKenna

  Shomoro felt strong, cold fingers—five of them—press against her chest and lever her upright. As her center of gravity returned, Shomoro realized Berkyavik’s hand was still on her, still gripping her shoulder. She pulled away, breathing hard, sweat breaking out on her skin. The audacity of it shocked her. What right had he to lay his hands on her, a citizen of Oskaran and seph of Za . . .

  The right didn’t matter, Shomoro realized. She was his prisoner, and the Surarch that would have retrieved her lay dead and rotting somewhere in the ruined carcass of Za. No one was coming to get her. Shomoro was on her own.

  “I can see you realize there’s no point in resisting us,” Berkyavik said. “Even if you managed to escape, you would have no home to return to. Za lies in ruins, and your lab is being scoured of valuable items by those in our pay even as I speak. For all intents and purposes, you belong to us. And we intend to analyze everything we can about you and what you know. You can count on it.”

  Shomoro spat in his face. “Analyze that,” she snapped.

  The big female Urd leapt forward, a demon of hate and fury burning in her yellow eyes. Her claws unsheathed with a wet sliding sound. Hissing with rage, she brought them up to encircle Shomoro’s throat.

  “No!” Berkyavik yelled. He batted the Urd’s claws away with one hand. The other procured a handkerchief from a pocket in his robe and wiped the saliva out of his eyes. “Damnit, Grelshk, I told you to stand down.”

  The Urd looked almost hurt. “But . . . Berkyavik-leader . . . this slug insults your honor! My mind cannot rest until she is punished. Please . . . allow me to at least take away the use of her eyes. That should be enough to break the wretch’s rebellious spirit.”

  Shomoro stood taut, her nerves thrumming with this new, ugly possibility. Would her Terran captor let his Urd carry out the threat? He had no reason not to: she didn’t need her eyes to talk, and without them she would be that much easier to control. Blind prisoners didn’t run far.

  A faraway look came over Berkyavik, and he said nothing for almost a minute. The Urd called Grelshk had twisted her horny head back to look at him, bobbing her low-slung body in excitement, yellow eyes filled with a ravenous longing. At last, the Terran patted her back and turned back toward his mahogany desk.

  “Grelshk, come with me. Firlz, guard.” The skinnier male Urd shot him a brisk acknowledging bob and made a show of training his attention on Shomoro. Grelshk scampered after Berkyavik. They halted behind his oversized desk halfway across the room—at what Berkyavik might suppose was out of Shomoro’s earshot—and began speaking in low, hurried tones.

  Shomoro could still hear them . . . but when she strained for the words, they dissolved into a mush of alien syllables. Gargles and guttural growls she could make no sense of.

  Krenkyr’s teeth, they’re speaking Urdeki. Shomoro shifted her attention away from the useless conversation and back to her restraints. The metal bindings had shoved her arms close together; if she stretched her hands, she could just touch the backs of her wrists. She could feel where the gel encasing her sheath openings had dried and become brittle, where she might be able to brush it off. If she could free her blades . . .

  She noticed movement, in the corner of attention focused outside herself. The Urd Grelshk coursed over the carpet toward her in a crimson shimmer of menace, arms tucked tight to her chest. Her claws were still out, and Shomoro flinched as she came near, halting a body length away. Berkyavik followed at a walking pace, unconcern in his voice as he said, “Grelshk has argued cogently that I ought to strip out your senses one by one, until you’ve told us everything we want to know and can offer us no more defiance than a hatchling. You’d be left with no more mind than one either, I might add, but that doesn’t seem to concern Grelshk. However, I believe you are of more value to us sane and whole . . . so I have offered her an alternative.”

  Shomoro cocked her head. “And that is?”

  He reached under the collar of his suit, manipulating some hidden circuitry there. The cords binding Shomoro’s ankles to the floor went limp and retracted into their red circles. The metal squeezing her arms loosened too, unraveling entirely as she pulled her arms forward. The device dropped to her feet with a clank. With mild disgust, Shomoro brushed the rest of the gel off her sheath openings. Suspicion flooded her at once, and Shomoro snapped her gaze back to Berkyavik.

  “Why . . .”

  “I want to see you fight Grelshk. One-on-one, no holds barred. You sephs kill alone, at night. The only Terrans who’ve ever seen you fight were found dead the next day, in their secure rooms with all their heavy guard and surveillance. I wish to observe your strength as a seph and live to tell of it.”

  And share the data with other White Arrows. He must be recording this somewhere. If the White Arrows really were interested in everything about her, Shomoro doubted they would have left a second of this exchange unrecorded. She could see it now, cameras and audio pickups switching on as soon as she was brought into the room by the Arrow foot soldiers. Data collection had already begun; Shomoro could do nothing about that. But she could choose not to be the compliant test subject any longer.

  “I will not do this.”

  Now it was Berkyavik’s turn to cock his head. “You’re refusing to fight?” To his left, Grelshk hummed with barely checked anticipation, her long claws flexing open and closed. The Urd’s talons dug furrows in the carpet as she clenched them into the floor.

  Shomoro held her head high and forward, looking the Terran in the eye. “I will not reveal the seph’s Art to a White Arrow. Not now or ever. Even my life is not worth such a betrayal.”

  He paced to one side of the carpeted room, heeling the smaller male Urd to him with a gesture. Grelshk neither moved nor took her golden eyes off her Osk target.

  “I am a bit disappointed, Shomoro” was all Berkyavik said.

  In the next second, the female Urd was on her.

  Shomoro hurled herself backward across the room as though the flames of Krenkyr were lapping at her feet. Her blades had sprung halfway from their sheaths, but she held her arms tight to her sides as she ducked and dodged away from the Urd. Grelshk came at her in a whirlwind of sharp bone, teeth snapping at Shomoro’s shoulders and neck while she feinted at the Osk’s torso with her outstretched claws. The Urd missed by a hairsbreadth the first few times, as Shomoro danced back over the carpet, but then thin lines of teal started to appear on her arms and chest as Grelshk nicked her with shallow cuts. Her mane flew around her head and neck in a black cloud, obscuring Shomoro’s throat and eyes and complicating the Urd’s aim.

  It would not be enough for much longer. Grelshk was well-fed, rested, and fighting on her home turf—all advantages Shomoro did not possess. On top of that, she was still reeling from the news of Za’s destruction and the disaster of her own capture. But she did have speed, and a reach with her blades that Grelshk could not hope to equal—if she used them.

  The right thing to do—the seph thing to do—would be to stand still and let the Urd tear her apart. Shomoro had been captured; the best she could hope for was a quick death before she revealed any more to the enemy. There was no logic in prolonging her life for the agonizing weeks or months it would take the White Arrows to pry out her secrets before they killed her themselves. She should let the overzealous Urd end it now, in a bloody brief rending of claws and fangs.

  Yet her body continued to stumble backward, juking and twisting away from Grelshk’s slashing forays. Below the knife edge of concentration her immediate survival demanded, confusion raised its snout and began to sniff. Several seconds had passed—seconds in which Shomoro had made no move to defend herself—yet she was still alive. That did not fit what she knew of Urd at all. Grelshk should have been able to close the distance between them easily at her top speed, catch Shomoro in the flying talon-first tackle that was a favorite tactic of the Urd, and bring her teeth in for the finishing m
ove in about three seconds.

  Grelshk was holding back in a fight to the death.

  That moment of stunned disbelief cost Shomoro her advantage. She caught her heel on a fold where the carpet had rucked up, and her legs flew out from under her. She sprawled on her back, the impact shocking the breath from her and jarring her sore muscles. In that horrible moment when her belly was exposed, the Urd’s shadow fell over Shomoro. Her skin went tight and cold, waiting for the creature’s claws to descend, pierce and rend. Her skin would stretch taut around four living needles of bone as the Urd pressed her claws into Shomoro’s flesh. Skin would give way in an upwelling of warm blood as the claws buried themselves deeper, toward the prizes of organs and arteries. She would feel the clench as the Urd grasped her intestines and ripped them out into the cold air, would die with the smell of her own entrails in her nostrils.

  The killing blow had not fallen. She twitched her head up: Grelshk was straddling her prone form, claws half raised as her eyes darted back and forth between Shomoro and Berkyavik. She was astonished to hear the creature make a low, plaintive chirp as she whipped her head back to look at her Terran master, as if asking him what to do next.

  Breathing hard, her skin still icy with the imagined feel of those killing claws, Shomoro risked a glance his way: Berkyavik’s stance was relaxed as he watched the two them from the margin of the room, one arm bent so he could rest a fist under his chin, the other arm tucked in the fold of his elbow. His expression was pensive, as though their fight held the same degree of interest as an expensive painting in some gallery. Only the slight upward quirk of his lips betrayed how much he was enjoying this. It might have been invisible to another, but Shomoro’s kind had evolved to see emotion in the tiniest gestures; often those were the only sort Osk used.

  Shomoro realized in a spurt of hot anger that he must have instructed Grelshk not to kill her. This entire fight had been a lie, a game constructed for his amusement. If it had an objective at all, she could not guess it. All she understood was that to play it, Berkyavik was using this vicious, dull-witted Urd . . . and he was using her.

  A thought entered her with the clean snap of breaking glass: so Berkyavik wanted to witness the seph’s Art, did he? Then why don’t I show him.

  She leapt up from the carpet with a hiss of pure malice and a right-handed slash toward the Urd’s face. She didn’t much care if it connected or not, as long as it gave her the opening she needed. Grelshk jerked back in a blur of speed, abandoning her crouch, and Shomoro leapt up and ran for the edge of the room. She packed every ounce of power she possessed into that sprint, holding her body almost horizontal above the carpet. Her blades were fully out, tucked close to her sides to facilitate speed; she could hear them slice the air with a thin whistle. In the second it took her to halve the distance, she saw the smug expression slide off Berkyavik’s face as the blood drained from it. His round black pupils grew wide in surprise and the beginnings of fear. Shomoro grinned—that’s right, taste it, child-murderer—and started to bring her blades up as she got ready to leap.

  A hundred fifty kilos of Urd slammed Shomoro into the carpet. She fell headlong, scraping throat and chest and belly against the scratchy fabric, her spine and ribs screaming where Grelshk had dug her talons into Shomoro’s back to pin her. She felt those terrible claws encircle her neck and squeeze with a pressure just less than that needed to break the skin. Slow, warm rivulets of blood slid down her back where the Urd’s talons marked her.

  Grelshk thrust her blunt face into Shomoro’s and screamed. Spittle struck her cheek, slid down as the creature’s high, grating shriek rang in Shomoro’s ears. Her hot carnivore breath filled the world. Tremors of rage ran through the Urd’s body. At any second those hooked claws would squeeze tighter around Shomoro’s throat, and this would all be over.

  Shomoro waited for a death that did not come.

  With a final hiss, Grelshk lifted the talon from her back and unlaced her claws. The Urd stalked to Berkyavik’s side, and he patted her fearsome head as one would a loyal pet.

  “You did well,” he said with a smile.

  Grelshk bobbed her head and spoke in clumsy English. “I learn. You see. I get better.”

  Shomoro staggered up. Confusion had set a glass dome over her thoughts. She had no idea what the Urd was talking about. She had no idea why it hadn’t killed her.

  Berkyavik turned to look at her. “Incredible.” His tone affected mild awe.

  Shomoro shook her head to clear it. “What . . . that I tried to kill you? What—what else—did you expect?” The fog was not going away.

  “Nothing more, nothing less.” His voice seemed to take on a soporific quality. “What surprises me is that you’re still able to stand. After all, it’s been some time since Grelshk inflicted the first cuts on you.”

  Shomoro blinked. She felt her knees start to buckle as a giant block of exhaustion and nausea swung into her, swaying her body with the impact. As the room blurred and dimmed, she faintly heard Berkyavik’s voice following her into the darkness.

  “The Urd possess glands near their claws and talons that secrete a potent sedative venom. They have the potential to be so much more than beasts, under our guidance. As do you, Shomoro. As do you . . .” His voice faded with the room as the carpeted floor rushed up to meet her.

  This time, no one would bother to catch her.

  6

  Jan Shanazkowitz’s life as a bureaucrat began with a hyperwave call in the middle of the night. He clawed sheets and covers away from his chest as the jangling tone rang off the walls of the bedroom, rolling over enough to slap the answer button on the flat phone console as he grunted, “Walls on. Dim.”

  The smartwalls began to exude a buttery glow, brightening from a weak candlelight to pale dawn and banishing some of Jan’s grogginess. He pushed himself up against the mattress, muscles achy with sleep, and rubbed at his eyes. The hyperwave’s holo screen was blank gray; the caller was unknown.

  “Hello? This is Jan Shanazkowitz. Whoever’s calling at this hour had better have a good reason.” He’d opted not to activate the video function on his bedroom phone. He wanted his callers to see him at his best.

  “Hello, Jan.” A woman’s voice answered, deep and assured. “Did I wake you?”

  Jan smiled despite his irritation. “Mum, it’s two in the morning. They keep Greenwich Mean Time here, remember?”

  “I know that. Why else would they call it Greenwich Hub?” Her voice was gently reproving. “This was the only spare moment I could find to call you. Nheris colony’s been busy as a beehive the last couple weeks, negotiating the changeover from military to civil admin. I’ve had maybe five hours’ sleep in the last two days.”

  More than enough for a four-star general, Jan thought with a touch of familial pride. His mother’s military career put his own to shame, though of course it wasn’t for lack of ability that he’d left that life. “Speaking of sleep, I have classes to teach tomorrow, so if this is a personal call . . .” Even as Jan spoke he knew it wasn’t. It never was with General Diane Shanazkowitz, certainly not at two a.m.

  “It’s not,” his mother said curtly. “I called to offer you a position in Nheris’ restructured administration.”

  “What position?” Jan asked.

  “Mine. Military liaison to the civil government. Of course, with the restructuring you’d have to work with civil officials; it would be a position of influence rather than executive authority. But it still represents an opportunity to shape our new colony’s future. Nheris’ government has been drafting policy like crazy since CoG lifted its hand; I thought you might like to be part of it.”

  Jan felt slightly breathless. A chance to help create policies, to shape a civil society according to the principles he’d upheld and expounded on academically for thirty years . . . it was exciting, intriguing. But he had questions.

  “Are you sure i
t’s kosher for me to take your job? Some people might call it nepotism.”

  “Nonsense. You’re excellently qualified from both civil and military standpoints.”

  Jan had to admit that was true. He had already lived several lives, of course: first as a career soldier, then a diplomatic envoy, a student, and finally a professor of philosophy. For the past ten years he’d served as a lecturer at Polaris University on Greenwich Hub and been quite content, but had never forgotten that in this day and age career changes weren’t just a possibility but a certainty. Human beings had a lot of time on their hands. The oldest people on record had been born at the dawn of space travel, three hundred years ago, around the time certain medical advances had lifted the lid on the upper limit of human life. The average human lifespan with standard medical treatment hovered at two hundred Earth years . . . and even that was a misleading figure, in that most people had been born after the nanotech revolution. They could be youngsters yet, and not know it.

  “What about my teaching? We’re in the middle of a semester—”

  “I’ve had my people contact Polaris University,” his mother said. “If you decide to take the job, they’ll arrange for a substitute to fill out your semester. It shouldn’t be a problem.”

  “If I take this job, what are you going to do? Take time to rest on your laurels after securing Olios 3 for the colony?”

  “No . . . no, I don’t think that’s in order.” For a moment, Jan heard a dark streak in his mother’s voice that made concern rise in his chest. Her usual briskness returned as she said, “Actually, I don’t think I’ll have the time to work with Nheris anymore. I’ve developed a side project . . . one which I’m afraid will shortly become my main project.”